


pure joy in the uprooting

by areyoumarriedriver



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e02 Strangers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2491388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoumarriedriver/pseuds/areyoumarriedriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The air is thick in the interior of the vehicle – the silence heavy, sodden with words that are invisible between them. His hands grip the wheel so tightly, he feels like he might snap it in two – and up ahead, a good distance away, he keeps his gaze mercilessly focussed on the tail lights, glowing red in the inky blackness of the night.</p><p>She hasn’t said anything. Not one single god-damned word since he told her to get in the car and she complied a half hour ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pure joy in the uprooting

**_pure joy in the uprooting_ **

****

The air is thick in the interior of the vehicle – the silence heavy, sodden with words that are invisible between them. His hands grip the wheel so tightly, he feels like he might snap it in two – and up ahead, a good distance away, he keeps his gaze mercilessly focussed on the tail lights, glowing red in the inky blackness of the night.

She hasn’t said anything. Not one single god-damned word since he told her to get in the car and she complied a half hour ago. How fucking far can this car be driving, anyway? She is tense in the passenger seat, her knees pressing together and her hands interlaced over them, palms together. He wants to say something – anything to make the curl of her shoulder relax, anything to fix what is broken within her. He wants her _back_ – it’s all he wants, he wants everything to be like it was, but he knows it can’t be.

“You were with Beth, after?” Her voice is tight, quiet in the hush and he can hear the worry lining it as he nods. He can do this, he thinks. Show her that he’s not only ready to listen whenever, but he’s ready to _talk_.

“Got her out after the bus left. She wanted to go look for everyone,” he sighs slightly and forcibly relaxes his grip, trying to keep his anxiety at bay. Too much shit was going on – he just wanted to slow down and _breathe_. After Beth is back, he promises himself. Washington be damned, he’ll put his foot down with Rick – they get far enough to put some distance between themselves and all these fuckers and they stop. Nobody could heal on the road, and they all needed to. “I told her everyone was dead.”

Her head turns at that, moonlight catching her profile in his peripheral vision. “You believed that?”

He nods sharply, his lip curling in to a grimace. “Yeah. No. I don’t know. I thought – it didn’t matter if they were or not. We could round all of them up – find everyone who fled the prison – and it wouldn’t matter. Not to me. Because you were-” His throat closes up at that and he stops himself, taking a breath and carrying on. “She basically said fuck me, and she was going to look anyway. Flipped me off and everything,” he chuckles at that. “Beth – can you imagine that?”

Carol laughs softly at that, but she nods. “I can. She’s a sweet girl, but she feels things so deeply. She was trying not to for a while I think. After Zach… she thought it made her more ready to deal with this world. What happened? I mean you don’t have to tell me-”

“I want to,” he glances at her from the corner of his eye as he watches the car ahead come to an intersection – go left. Toward the highway, he thinks. He follows it, waiting until they’re on the road behind it again, a good click and a half back. “She was upset – about her dad. Said she wanted a drink. Which – I don’t know. The hell was I supposed to say to her? No? Her father was just fucking murdered in front of her. So we looked. Eventually found this shack. Moonshine. I got drunk, and fucking mean and she – she told me it wasn’t my fault. We talked – said I’d be the last one standing and that just – I don’t want to be the last one standing.” He glances at her and finds her watching him intently. “Told her – about before, you know? How I was nothing then and nothing now and how I grew up in a place just like the shithole we were in. She said we gotta – we gotta be who we are, not who we used to be. And we burnt the fucking place down.” He pauses at her gasp, and he glances over at her, curious.

She shakes her head quickly – “We saw smoke. Could have been you two.” She shrugs and his chest aches at the thought – that she’d been _so_ close.

“Was teaching her to hunt – you know. Just in case. But she hurt her ankle, so we found a funeral home – had supplies that people’d left. Beth wanted to leave some for them – in case they came back. In case they were good people. We thought about staying but - we got over run. I told her to run, she did. She listened. But when I got out that fucking car was pulling away. Didn’t stop – I ran after it. But she was just gone. Everyone was just _gone_. So I found this group of assholes – fuck they made Merle look like humanitarian of the fucking year. But I joined them anyway. Til they rolled up on Rick and ‘Chonne. Carl. Tried to- I fought them. We fought them. And then we found Terminus.” He somehow manages to get through the whole thing without cracking, and he lets out a big sigh afterward, relief flooding through him. He’s told the others – bare details, but not this. Not everything.

“We’ll find her, Daryl. We’ll get her back for you.” She finally speaks softly and he shakes his head.

“For everyone. For Maggie,” he stresses. “She’s family – we’re _all_ family.” A heavy pause fills the air and he turns his head to look at her, the lights from the dash making the tense press of her lips visible. “You can’t leave, Carol.”

“I wasn’t-” Her voice wavers and slides to a stop as she blinks and looks ahead, refusing to meet his eyes. “Daryl…” she sighs out his name and he shakes his head sharply, the tension returning to his frame.

“You don’t have to talk about it. I don’t care if you never ever tell me what happened to you out there. So it’s all different – so fucking what? Sometimes that ain’t a bad thing, Carol. Different. Sometimes it’s a relief. Sometimes it’s a joy – but leaving is the easy way out, and you can’t do that. You have to _promise_ me you won’t. You don’t wanna talk to anybody, that’s fine. I won’t make you. You wanna just stick with me, that’s fine. I’m not asking you to play happy families when I know for damn sure there’s a lot of shit to work out. But stay. Please.” She sniffles at his words and his whole chest feels like it’s on fire for a moment before the engine of the car splutters, jerks and stalls, distracting them both. “God fucking dammit!” He pounds his hand against the wheel as the car coasts to a stop, looking ahead to the taillights rapidly disappearing over the horizon. “Shit!”

Carol doesn’t even fucking pause, throwing the door open, crossing round to his side and jerking his door open as well. “Come on. It’s the highway, Daryl – we’ll walk. Find another vehicle. They’re headed to the city – we can look once we get there.” She grabs his collar, all but dragging him to his feet and leaving him standing there with a pat to his chest. She reaches in the back, hands him his crossbow before she grabs her own pack from the trunk – and the sight of it is like a visceral stab to his heart. She looks up as she shoulders it, her face apologetic. “It wasn’t just… I know things are different.” Her voice is quiet as they start to walk, shoulder to shoulder, their steps hurried. “It was… that. And just – the unknown. I don’t know who to be around them anymore, Daryl. Who knows and who doesn’t know and Tyreese just – I look at him and I see… everything. I feel like I don’t even know any of them anymore. Like they don’t know me. Like a stranger.” Her words were soft and he presses closer to her side as they carry on.

“I know you,” he insists and she stops, turning to look at him with eyes that are uncertain. “Don’t. I _know_ you, don’t you fucking tell me I don’t. You were protecting us – and I don’t give a fuck what Rick said, I don’t need you to tell me a damn thing to know that Carol. They weren’t just suffering a light cough when you did it. That kid kicked it in less than eighteen hours – turned instantly. You waited as long as you could – weren’t nobody but you checking on them that night. Limited exposure, am I right? You thought you could stop it and they were suffering. See? I don’t need you to talk about it. Because I _know_ _you_. Better than anybody.” His voice is soft as he presses closer – close enough that his chest brushes against hers when she takes a deep breath, her gaze finally lifting to his, tears in her eyes. “You’re not a stranger. Not to me.”

Her face is strangely serene for a moment, her breaths shallow and quick before it all changes suddenly. Her face crumples and she drops it into his shoulder, unwilling to let him see. He allows her that, his arms wrapping around her loosely as she cries – even that sound is restrained, quiet and soundless. He holds her, not moving them forward, just waiting her out until her arms slowly wrap around his waist. He crushes her to him at that – his hold tightening – he didn’t want to scare her away, but he couldn’t seem to let her go. They stood like that for a while until her frame stopped shaking, and her breathing evened out. When she steps back, his hands don’t want to leave her, they trail over her back, down her arms, strangely reluctant to let go. “Shit, we’re losing time,” her voice is thick when she finally speaks.

She moves to continue walking, and he turns with her, but his hand refuses to let hers go. She glances down, but doesn’t say anything to object, and he sighs in relief before he says, “The city, remember? We’ll find her once we get there.”

“Then what? Rick won’t wait – he’s made his decision, he’ll press on.” Her voice is somewhat bitter and he shrugs.

“Well fuck, we know where they’re going. Know the routes he’ll take – it’s Rick. He’s mostly predictable by this point. We’ll find them too.” He doesn’t speak for a moment, watching her, his eyes taking in her face, the set of her jaw, the cold mask slipping back into place. “We’ll deliver Beth and then decide what to do.”

Her feet stumble at that and his grip on her hand keeps her from overbalancing as she looks back. “What do you mean? Rick said – Washington.”

“Is that what you want to do?” He asks as he adjusts the strap of his crossbow. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t leave until he started calling the shots again. If you don’t want to go to Washington, we won’t go.”

“But Rick-”

“Carol, I told you back there. You gotta promise me – no leaving.” He tugs on her hand until she stills again, her shoulders dropping in defeat. “I can’t lose you again. Not _ever_ again – you hear me?”

“But the group-”

“Fuck the group!” He finally lets the fear explode from him, his heart racing in his chest. “I was knelt in front of a trough where they had me trussed up and you know what? I was _ready to die_. I didn’t even fucking fight them – Rick was the one still trying to escape. He had Carl to fight for – and I -  I didn’t _care_. Carol – I’d found all of them again and I still didn’t want to fight. For what? All a’this?”

“Don’t say that,” her voice is a quiet command. “You tried, you can’t tell me you didn’t try.”

“I tried. We fucking failed spectacularly. I was knelt there and I thought – I hoped that Beth was okay. And I thought I’d be okay – it wouldn’t hurt. And I’d see you again. I thought you were dead, Carol. But you saved me.” He is breathing heavy and takes a moment to press his free hand over his face before he looks at her again. “Yeah, Rick is family. They’re all my family. But you’re _here_ and you’re alive and I will do whatever it takes, Carol. You want me to give you space, I’ll give it to you, you want me to shut the fuck up, I will. But I’m not letting you run, and I’m not losing you. So we’ll fucking go get Beth, we’ll find everyone, we’ll decide what to do. But you gotta stay with me.” He feels exhausted – just absolutely drained from the effort of fucking everything, and she stares at him in disbelief. “Promise me.”

Her chin jerks down to her chest and she looks back up, finally nodding slowly. “Okay. Okay I promise, I won’t leave. We’ll decide together. After we find Beth – we’ll wait until then to decide.”

Relief explodes through him, leaving him feeling light headed as he sways on his feet, pulling her closer. “Thank you.” His voice is a rough whisper and her other hand comes up to cradle the side of his face as he presses his forehead against hers, exhaling.

“I still don’t want to talk about everything. Not – not yet. But I will. I promise, okay? I’ll tell you.”

“When you’re ready,” he breathes the words out, pulling back to look at her. “I’m not going anywhere, no matter what, okay? No matter what it was, no matter what happened. I’m not leaving, and you’re not leaving, right?”

“Right,” she nods and he presses against her for one more moment as she smiles softly. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much in all the time I’ve known you as you have these past two days, Daryl Dixon.”

He huffs out a laugh at that, a smile curling his mouth as he decides to further shock her, and he bends down to press a kiss to the side of her face. Her cheek is soft and her skin is cool against his lips. Her fingers press into his face, nails scraping against the skin of his jaw as she breathes in deeply.  “You know me, I just never shut up.” He teases her awkwardly and she stares at him, a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth.

“I won’t try to leave again.” She promises and he grunts, nodding slightly as they untangle a bit. He misses the feel of her against him almost instantly and he hitches his crossbow over his shoulder, irritated with that fact.

“I’m not saying you can’t. Just don’t go without me.” She nods at his words, her eyes dropping as she licks her lips and turns back to the road. The sun is just starting to make its presence known – pale blue light creeping up over the horizon.

“Come on, it’ll be light soon. We’ll be able to find another car.” She moves forward but pauses – stopping to hold out her hand. He feels something within him shift and ease at the sight – they’re not where he wants them to be, but he knows they’re going to get there. Together.

He takes her hand in his as they walk toward the light.

 


End file.
